Читать книгу Global Warming and Other Bollocks - Stanley Feldman - Страница 28

There are many reasons why one cannot blindly accept the belief that anthropogenic CO₂ is the cause of global warming without reservation. The knowledge that the Earth has cooled in the past when the CO₂ levels in the atmosphere were many times higher than at present challenges the certainty with which the opinion that climate change is CO₂-driven is being presented. It suggests that those who tell us that the case is proven are wrong. The evidence is at best equivocal and our approach to the theory must be more open-minded.

There is little doubt that the world has warmed up over the past 50 years and that the rate of warming is a little greater than that seen previously, even if the extent is less than that which has occurred over other periods. Although it is possible to explain the rise in temperature by cyclical changes that occur naturally, it is the rate of change that has led to the speculation that some, if not all, of this is due to the extra CO₂ released by industrial activity. Certainly CO₂ is a greenhouse gas but the evidence that the extra CO₂ produced by industrialisation is the cause of the 0.6–0.8ºC of global warming seen over the past 100 years, or that it presages a future calamity, is insufficient to be convincing.